Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Fatal (And Very Expensive) Flaws of Canary Revealed After My Home Is Burglarized CONCLUSION: The Canary device is excellent at making movies of your home being burglarized, and horrible at actually preventing burglaries and notifying the police. If you purchase this, do not have any illusions. You are purchasing a $200 motion sensor camera, NOT a reliable security device. You ABSOLUTELY need another system on top of the Canary devices that automatically sirens and automatically notifies the Police. Thus, I give the Canary devices one-star because it is advertised as a security device that will protect your home, your belongings, and your family. In reality, it is little more than a $200 motion sensor camera that will not protect your home, family, or belongings when it really matters. At 2:22AM on 8/15/16, two suspects unlawfully entered my home in Phoenix, Arizona. They entered by wrapping a towel around a piece of wood, breaking a door window, and unlocking the door from the inside. I had two Canary devices inside that sensed the motion and recorded videos of the suspects. All of my valuable items in the home were taken by the suspects. The video shows one suspect named Michael well however the quality of the Canary video is not high enough to have any good shots of who I call SUSPECT 1. I know one of the suspect's names is Michael because the suspects get into an argument and SUSPECT 1 calls Michael by his name. I am attaching the videos taken to this review. On one hand, the Canary did what it was supposed to do. It sensed the motion of the two suspects and recorded audio and video of them. The audio is surprisingly clear and loud and I was able to transcribe most of the conversation between the suspects. The video leaves more to be desired, however for a $200 device I don't feel like I have room to complain. But I must mention it for potential purchasers of this device. SUSPECT 1 passes by the Canary several times within two feet of it. The video is simply not clear enough in night vision to have a good shot of SUSPECT 1's face. No screen shots can be lifted from the footage that clearly show SUSPECT 1's face enough to lead to an apprehension of him. Fortunately, the Canary is the bedroom and in the living room captured Michael's tattoos and face well enough to identify him. I cannot stress enough how key the clear audio is in my situation. I was able to get the name of one suspect and also a lot of useful information in how they scoped out the house. HOWEVER, you are looking at this Canary device because you want to PREVENT your items being stolen, not just make a film of it being stolen. I had over $30,000 worth of items stolen from my house and I have nice evidence for the police, but that is completely different than the actual crime being prevented. FATAL FLAW #1: You CANNOT set your Canary to automatically sound the siren when motion is detected in ARM mode. What happens is that the Canary senses the motion, starts recording, and is supposed to send a notification to your phone of the movement. Here's the fatal flaw...it is likely that you are not going to be awake when the burglary occurs. My burglary happened at 2:30am and I was sleeping. You can read other users reporting flaws in the notification system here. Canary's timeline says it sent me a notification at 2:33am, but my phone never received it. Even if my phone had received it, I would have very likely slept through the tone from my phone for the notification. When the notification comes, assuming it actually comes to your phone, you have the option to manually sound the siren or manually contact the police. If you are sleeping or traveling, it is likely you are going to miss this notification. And then you end up with good video of all your belongings you have acquired over 30 years being stolen. Then you hope and pray your typically inept local police force can use all this great evidence to actually catch a suspect. By that time, your belongings are long gone. The only reason to purchase this device is to PREVENT theft, not make a movie of the theft. You will see from the videos, had the siren automatically gone off, these suspects would have fled. If that happened, the Canary would be what the company touts it to be: a complete and trustworthy security system for your home without monthly fees and long contracts. The simple fact is that you need 24/7 monitoring by an agency to actually protect your home because you need to sleep 8 hours per night and you lose service when you travel. Without the automatic siren and without automatic police notification, this Canary device is a $200 burglary movie maker, not a complete security device. As this device is now, you NEED to have a secondary system on top of the Canary that automatically sirens and automatically contacts the police. Also think about this serious issue. I was not home when my home was burglarized. But you are also looking at this device TO SCARE HOME INTRUDERS AWAY WHEN YOU ARE SLEEPING AT THAT HOME. The videos I am posting shows the intruders came in and went directly to the master bedroom where I would usually be sleeping. Time from when the Canary started recording to them reaching my bedroom was around 20 seconds. You DO NOT have enough time to get to your phone and sound the siren manually after receiving the notification. The burglars will be on top of you and your wife and your children, with no siren going off to notify your neighbors and not automatic police notification, and all you can do is just hope you can wake up, get your bearings, and grab your shotgun and start firing in under 20 seconds. Oh wait, you don't own a shotgun? Well then forget about it because you will be too dazed from sleeping to aim your handgun properly, and if they have a gun, and you fire or brandish your gun, you and your family are dead. And remember, your burglars are wide awake and likely intoxicated by any type of substance. Oh wait, you don't own a gun? Well all you can do is just hope your burglars are nice and will only tie you and your family up and leave. But you saw their faces? Well that puts the burglars in a real bind. My burglars figured out the Canary system was running and they figured out it was connected to the Wi-Fi network. How are the burglars going to react in your home, with no police notification, with no siren going, with you at gun point, when they think you have video of them in the cloud in addition to seeing their faces? And my burglars stole my Canary devices, which brings me to my next point... FATAL FLAW #2: From the date of purchase, I thought to myself that designing a security product that you simply place on a shelf is not a good idea. Unfortunately, I ignored my thoughts and purchased the Canary. It is important to note that the Canary is not disguised. When looking at it you can clearly see it's a camera and it even has bright lights that flicker and can be seen underneath it. When you sleep with a Canary in your bedroom, it's these lights will light up your room to the point where you may need to cover your canary completely. Also, No attempt has been made by the designer's to make the Canary look like anything other than a video camera with bright lights. You cannot mount the Canary up high on the wall and out of reach as the device has no mounting holes on the back. I searched Amazon when I purchased the Canary and no mounting devices are on sale. So, I did what the designer suggests and what every owner must do, I placed them on shelves in my living room and bedroom. I placed them in plain view because the wide angle lens of the camera cannot be obstructed by an object to have a clear field of recording. So these two burglars walk into a dark house with these two Canaries flickering their lights away. You can see the burglars notice the lights and look at the devices as soon as they walk in. It just took them a few minutes to realize what those flickering lights were connected to, AND THEY STOLE THE CANARY DEVICES, and ended the video feed, which is extremely fast and easy to do. So if your burglars have been in your house before (which is often the case) and seen your Canary device, they will go straight for it when they enter and obstruct their face from the video feed. The evidence shows that after the burglars unplugged the Canary devices, they were in the house an hour or more afterwards and they left and made at least one trip back to get the bigger items in the home like my $6,000 road bicycle I've used in several races over the years and paid $1,200 to have it custom fitted to my body. I wanted to upload ALL three (3) videos taken by the Canary devices but Amazon will only allow me to upload one video, so I am uploading the longest video taken. I am uploading ALL of the screen shots I pulled from the videos to provide to police and share on Facebook and with neighbors. This gives you an idea of the capabilities of the $200 MOTION SENSOR CAMERA you are purchasing. You can probably find a less expensive motion sensor camera on Amazon that does the same thing, but I will leave the research up to you.